


Commute

by Hollandoodle



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Commute, F/M, Music, Music Lovers, One Shot, Shy Sandor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-23
Updated: 2017-11-23
Packaged: 2019-02-05 19:50:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,361
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12801105
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hollandoodle/pseuds/Hollandoodle
Summary: Sandor sees a woman in traffic who intrigues him. Little does he know, they'll find a way to interact on the Interstate!





	Commute

**Author's Note:**

> I've got a lovely little ficlet here - la-da-di-da  
> Here it is just sitting on the web - la-da-di-da
> 
> Okay, now sing that to "I've Got A Lovely Bunch Of Coconuts" and we'll be golden.
> 
> This stemmed from one of those Sansan-Self-Prompts that I needed to get out of my head. It was a cute idea, and I hope I did it justice. 
> 
> Happy Holidays!! And Happy Thanksgiving!
> 
> This year I am incredibly thankful for the welcoming community here on AO3 - you guys rock my world. Have I told you that before? Because you do. You totally do.

There she was--the little sky blue 4Runner Sandor had been sharing his commute with for the last two weeks. Apparently her schedule aligned with his so that when he pulled out of his neighborhood and onto the freeway at exactly 6:45am, she was somewhere in his line of sight. Behind him, beside him, in front of him. It didn’t matter--she had been there every day.

It seemed like serendipity, as well as the coincidence that his old Ford pickup didn’t have a fancy lift kit on it--all original, just the way he liked it, except for the medium tint on his windows and updated radio system--and her side windows were the same height as his own.

This was the reason why he knew she had carrot-colored hair that fell well below the base of her window, a slender column of ivory neck, and a penchant for singing and dancing, if that’s what it could be called, while driving.

The weather had been cold this spring so he never knew what it was she was singing along to, nor could he hear her music when she happened to be on his left and he’d roll his window down an inch or two to listen in.

But sang she did, as they made their way along the freeway, cruising at seventy or crawling at three. And the times Sandor was blessed with heavier than normal traffic and their vehicles stopped in close proximity to each other, he was thankful for his tinted windows because they afforded him the opportunity to stare.

She was gorgeous and lively, likely somewhere in her mid to late twenties and--

And so out of his league that it wasn’t even funny.

But that didn’t stop him from looking, nor from eagerly awaiting the day when she would roll down those windows and let him know what kind of music she listened to that encouraged her to swing her hair, drive with no hands (at the crawling speeds, of course), and seemingly belt out lyrics that he was unable to read on her lips.

Just like she was doing now, but as he watched, she lifted a coffee to her lips and took a drink, her tongue coming out to catch a droplet of liquid that had escaped just below her lower lip.

_ Fuck _ , but she was a looker. The years he had spent commuting to Selmy Classic Auto had finally brightened with the addition of her.

But since there was nothing Sandor could do to introduce himself--and likely wouldn’t have, even if they’d been riding, say, a public bus and had sat next to each other--he resigned himself now to just watching her, the creepy older guy who hid behind the tint, wishing life hadn’t dealt him the terrible blow of being the easy target for his brother cruel temper.

 

º˚º˚º˚º˚º˚º˚º˚º

 

Summer came, and with it warmer temperatures, and the long awaited day when she finally drove down the freeway with her windows open. 

The first day Sandor figured out she listened to her own music, since nothing on his radio matched the country song she was singing to--”My Maria” by Brooks & Dunn (he’d looked it up when he arrived at work).

And boy, did she sing. Her voice carried through the crack in his window from her more open one, her voice high and clear, sounding either classically trained or like an unnatural gods-given talent. 

The second day he expected more country music, only to hear her “Sound Of Silence”--the Disturbed version--crooning from her open window. Her comical scowl and clenched fist for emphasis during “And the people bowed and prayed” made him laugh out loud.

There were a couple days where he wasn’t able to drive next to her, but always there were days where on one side or the other, she would sit in her 4Runner and sing to her pretty heart’s content.

There was “Hey Little Girl” by Dee Clark--he actually knew the words to that one.

One day he heard “Sugar” by Maroon Five--nope, didn’t know that one.

He cursed out loud when he rolled up and she was listening to some rap song, looking utterly ridiculous at her attempts to follow the words. He didn’t even bother looking that one up.

But her soulful version of Pentatonix’s version of “Hallelujah” nearly made him show up at work in tears.

Soon the weather became too hot to drive with the windows up and he wondered if she would resort to air conditioning, ruining his fun on his morning commute.

But she didn’t. Instead she seemed to appreciate the reasonably fresh air with her sunroof back and shades on, red hair whipping about her head as she belted out more music than he cared to look up.

Then the unthinkable happened one day, and he thought for sure his morning entertainment would be over.

He was driving along the freeway, having spotted her a few cars ahead of him. He’d thought to roll his window down then, knowing that even if his hair blew around in the breeze, at least she wouldn’t be there to see his scars. Other drivers did, but he didn’t give a flying fuck what they thought. 

But this girl. This  _ woman _ . This red headed siren who had sung her song and drawn him in with her mesmerising voice and beauty--yeah, he did care what she thought of him, because the last thing he wanted to do was make her leave an extra five minutes early each morning just to avoid his ugly mug.  _ Fugly _ , he’d been called recently by a young teen at the store.

He’d looked that up too, and fought with himself over whether or not his feelings had actually been hurt by the little shit.

So on this hot morning when he had his window rolled down all the way, arm resting on the opening and his own music turned up--Everlast, because again, he didn’t give a fuck what anyone thought--he lost himself in the words of “What It’s Like” and didn’t even realize when his lane had suddenly caught up to hers.

After the song had ended and the next one on the album, “Get Down,” began playing, he was brought out of his musical reverie by the awareness that the redhead was gone. He could no longer see her up ahead of him, despite traffic now coming to a crawl.

As he was scanning to the right of his truck, a ridiculous sound started coming from the vehicle next to him, and he thought for sure he had found himself parked next to a busload of kids.

He didn’t want to look, didn’t want to risk scaring any of the little kids who would inevitably start crying once they saw his reddened, mangled skin and missing hair. He almost rolled up his window just to avoid the situation.

But no sounds came, except for a man’s voice that he could have sworn sounded like Dwayne Johnson’s, aka former pro wrestler The Rock.

Curiosity won out, and he casually looked to his left--

\--Only to see two bright blue eyes lit up by the sun, staring at him from the vehicle next to him.

A vehicle that happened to be a sky blue Toyota 4Runner, driven by a gorgeous redhead.

_ Fucking fuckity fuck _ . 

Sandor would have punched the gas had he not been stuck in traffic. As it was, he gripped his steering wheel with a white knuckled grip and slowly turned back to the road.

But she wasn’t singing, and that was very telling.

And she hadn’t been singing for some time, obviously, when he’d finally looked over at her. Which likely meant she’d been looking at him… 

For quite some time…

_ Fuckity fuck _ . 

He hazarded another glance in her direction to find her--not smiling at him, but fucking  _ beaming _ at him.

_ What the fuck? _

This was the strangest day ever. He nodded slowly in her direction, and turned his head back, loosening his grip on his steering wheel in case she had noticed his death grip. 

As traffic crawled along, her vehicle stayed in line with his. Her music switched from Dwayne Johnson singing about a demigod, to some strange characters singing about Paris, the city of lovers, and that there’s a guy the girl is waiting for… But then he drifted ahead of her for a moment, before her lane caught up to him again and he heard the lyrics: 

> ♬ ♫ ♪
> 
> You see that face
> 
> You don't forget it
> 
> Want something new?
> 
> That's you
> 
> For sure!
> 
> We all have gaped
> 
> At some Adonis
> 
> But then we crave a meal
> 
> More nourishing
> 
> To chew
> 
> And since you've shaped
> 
> Like a croissant is
> 
> No question of
> 
> She's gotta love
> 
> A guy like you!
> 
> ♬ ♫ ♪

She wasn’t singing, so when he looked at her to see why, he found her again smiling at him, this time with the fingernails of one hand pressed against her teeth in a sort of grimace--a grinning grimace.

Those lyrics--how could they be so… relevant? It was so ridiculous Sandor  _ almost _ laughed at it.

They played at this pull-away and come-back, one of their lanes taking them further ahead only to bring them back together, listening to the music that her vehicle was hopefully playing at random. The final one, when Sandor could see his exit up ahead, ended up being the one that made the woman laugh out loud.

> ♬ ♫ ♪
> 
> Certain as the sun
> 
> Rising in the east
> 
> Tale as old as time
> 
> Song as old as rhyme
> 
> Beauty and the Beast
> 
> ♬ ♫ ♪

He looked over at her then, half expecting her to be laughing  _ at _ him, and was surprised to see her smile had faded to almost nothing. What was left was… emotion. Feelings. Written all over her beautiful face. 

Sandor couldn’t help it. He smiled at her, just enough to let her know it was there, since when he smiled broadly it pulled at his scars and looked and felt uncomfortable. And when she didn’t recoil at the sight of it, he nodded once more before changing lanes, and taking the exit that lead to Selmy’s.

 

º˚º˚º˚º˚º˚º˚º˚º

 

He didn’t see her again all week, despite looking for her. Her 4Runner was nowhere to be seen, despite him rubbernecking so he could see traffic around him from all angles. Every morning for a week he arrived at work with a sore neck, having wondered if that was the day they were going to have another… he didn’t even know what to call it. Encounter? Rendezvous? Convergence?

But he also received a partial explanation for her absence when on Friday he arrived at work to see the sky blue 4Runner already up on a lift.

It took all of his self control to not pepper Barristan with questions about the owner. Was it a woman? When did she drop it off? Would she be coming back in to pick it up? He knew he wouldn’t sneak a peek at the file, so he was left with either waiting for a glimpse of her in the shop or asking questions.

Deciding on the former, he waited.

And waited.

And then he did some more waiting.

He changed tires, changed oil, gave a Silverado a tune-up and rotated the tires on an octogenarian’s Oldsmobile. 

By the time he clocked out her 4Runner was done by one of the other mechanics and waiting for someone to pick it up. Try as he might, Sandor could find no reason to stick around that wouldn’t look incredibly out of character for him.

Then on Monday she still wasn’t on the freeway, and her 4Runner was gone from the shop.  _ Fuck _ , he felt like he had missed a chance that he never really had in the first place.

So when he spotted her up ahead on the freeway Tuesday morning at the usual time, he found himself unaccountably grouchy when he wasn’t able to catch up to her in traffic. He spent an hour of his morning watching her four, five, sometimes six cars ahead of him, swaying to music in the cabin of her SUV, wishing he knew what music she was listening to. More of that ridiculous rap music? The sappy country music? The Disney music--he had looked them up--that somehow managed to have lyrics that cut just a little bit too close to home?

It drove him nuts not knowing, and as he watched her continue on past his exit when he turned to head towards Selmy’s, he felt like the angst of knowing she had been so close and yet so far, had caught up to him, making him like a rabid hound to be around that day at the shop.

It was no better the next day when the same fucking thing happened, and he had to watch her all those cars ahead of him--even at one point appearing to turn her head in multiple directions looking for something. Him? He could only hope…

The men at the shop gave him a wide berth that day as well, with his day ending with a stern talking to by Barristan himself. 

“Fix it,” he’d said, though there was no real anger in his tone. He cared for Sandor, in a fatherly  _ get your shit together _ kind of way.

So when Sandor left for work on Wednesday morning, he slid an Aerosmith CD that he’d made into the truck and turned the music up, determined not to let this perceived connection between him and the mystery redhead color his day.

The gods must have been smiling down at him--or at least willing to throw him a bone--because there she was, pulling neck and neck with his truck as traffic came grinding to a halt. 

She was on the driver’s side once again, his scarred side. But when he looked over at her, she had that broad smile on her face again. He turned down his music to hear if she was playing any, attempting to focus on the sounds emanating from her vehicle instead of losing himself in those amazing blue eyes, but she shook her head.

Then she held up her hand towards him, holding her thumb and forefinger an inch apart, and emulated the turning of a knob--the volume knob, he presumed.

Rather than speaking to him, which she could have done if she’d spoken somewhat loudly, she was telling him to turn up the volume of his own radio, so  _ she _ could hear what he was playing, while smiling in a way he could only describe as encouraging.

So he did, reaching over to turn the volume dial on the radio until the lyrics filled his cab and reached through the air into her own.

> ♬ ♫ ♪
> 
> There's a hole in my soul
> 
> That's been killing me forever
> 
> It's a place where a garden never grows
> 
> There's a hole in my soul
> 
> Yeah, i should have known better
> 
> 'cause your love's like a thorn without a rose
> 
> ♬ ♫ ♪

Sandor looked ahead to follow the traffic in front of him, noting that her lane was moving a bit faster. When he glanced at her she had the saddest look on her face, and her hand rested on her chest as she followed the vehicle in front of her, a car length ahead of him, and then two car lengths. After a couple minutes they came back together, and Sandor’s music was still turned up.

He still felt incredibly self conscious about his scars, knowing he was rendered basically immobile by his position in a vehicle on the freeway, unable to duck away and hide as he sometimes did at Selmy’s. But it was as though the woman just ignored them, instead interacting with him in a way that made her seem utterly adorable to him.

The song faded and the next one came on, a tune that he was sure only people who lived under rocks wouldn't know.

> ♬ ♫ ♪
> 
> I could stay awake just to hear you breathing
> 
> Watch you smile while you are sleeping
> 
> While you're far away and dreaming
> 
> ♬ ♫ ♪

Again, she had her hand to her heart, as though the songs he chose to listen to somehow touched her. 

This time it was he who pulled away with traffic, and it stayed that way for several minutes. At one point traffic even came to a standstill, and he wondered what she was doing, moving about in her 4Runner as though she was looking for something.

Because he wasn’t creepily watching her in his mirrors. Nope. Not him.

He breathed a sigh of relief when the lines of vehicles began moving again, and her lane slowly crawled back so she was even with him.

Up ahead his exit came into view, and he looked back at her, already nodding a farewell.

And then the next song came on, and he was mortified.

> ♬ Pink it's my new obsession ♬

He needed to either abruptly shut off the music, or let it play out, and he looked over at the redhead as the next line came through the speakers.

> ♬ Pink it's not even a question ♬

They were listening to a song that was reportedly about… about… Gods, he didn’t even want to think about it with her staring at him like that, mouth hanging open, eyes wide.

> ♬ Pink on the lips of your lover ♬

Vaginas. It was a song about vaginas. And he was looking at her while Steven Tyler sang about vaginas.

> ♬ ‘Cause pink is the love you discover ♬

_ Just shoot me now _ . So much for impressing the lady with his choice of music. 

Sandor looked away, seeing it was very nearly his turn to switch lanes and exit the freeway. Hazarding a glance back at the red goddess in the sky blue 4Runner whom he was sure was never going to leave her house at the same time again, he was surprised--as usual--to see that smile back on her face, the smile that told him she, too, felt like they shared something on the freeway.

A second before he put on his blinker to get over, she held up a hand. In that hand she held a paper airplane, and it took Sandor just a heartbeat to realize what was happening.

The redhead was going to send him an airplane. And he was going to get that airplane, even if he had to stop in the middle of traffic if it went off course.

She pulled her hand back by her head, keeping the plane from hitting either her hair or the seat back behind her, and looked directly at him--at his  _ face _ , scars and all--and she winked at him.

Then she tossed the plane in his direction, and as though time slowed he watched the plane swoop low by the edge of her passenger side window, turn upside down, swoop up as though it were going to ascend to the heavens from between their vehicles, and then banked at the last moment to take a nosedive directly into the meat of his thigh.

And then she was gone, pulling ahead of him as traffic sped up and he used the opportunity to get into the exit lane and head towards Selmy’s.

 

º˚º˚º˚º˚º˚º˚º˚º

 

> _ To the man in the old Ford pickup--I am sorry for subjecting you to a song about Quasimodo, and for another referencing Beauty And The Beast. I imagine you to be more like Maui (the courageous hero at the  _ _ end _ _ of the movie “Moana,” not the arrogant douche at the beginning...) _
> 
> _ Please accept my apology and, assuming you are unattached, my offer of dinner this Saturday at the new diner on Main St., King’s Landing. I’ve heard the owner is a real tool, but also that they make a mean lemon cake. _
> 
> _ Aerosmith is amazing, by the way. I think we are going to get along just fine. _
> 
> _ Talk to you soon, _
> 
> _ Sansa Stark _
> 
> _ 452-555-7535 _

**Author's Note:**

> No, I'm not likely to continue this. It was just a fun little story to write.
> 
> But there will be more ficlets and longer stories! <3


End file.
